This Is Not the Story You Think It Is by Laura Munson

On Tuesday, July 20th, From Left to Write bloggers will be discussing the book This Is Not the Story You Think It Is by Laura Munson

About the book:

When Laura Munson’s essay was published, The New York Times was so flooded with responses that they had to close down the comment feature. Readers wrote in saying that they had sent the column to all of their friends. Therapists wrote Munson to tell her that they were passing it out to their clients.

What did Munson write that caused such a fervor?

Laura detailed what happened when her husband of more than twenty years told her he wasn’t sure he loved her anymore and wanted to move out. And while you might think you know where this story is going, this isn’t the story you think it is. Laura’s response to her husband: I don’t buy it.

In this poignant, wise, and often funny memoir, Munson recounts a period of months in which her faith in herself-and her marriage-was put to the test. Shaken to the core after the death of her beloved father, not finding the professional success that she had hoped for, and after countless hours of therapy, Laura finally, at age forty, realized she had to stop basing her happiness on things outside her control and commit herself to an “End of Suffering.” This Is Not The Story You Think It Is… chronicles a woman coming to terms with the myths we tell ourselves-and others-about our life and realizing that ultimately happiness is completely within our control.

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780399156656,00.html?This_Is_Not_The_Story_You_Think

Purchase your copy of This Is Not the Story You Think It Is by Laura Munson here.

If You Knew Suzy by Katherine Rosman

On Tuesday, July 6th, From Left to Write bloggers will be discussing the book If You Knew Suzy by Katherine Rosman.

About the book:

Faced with the loss of her mother, Suzy, to cancer at sixty, Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Rosman longs to find answers to the questions that we all wrestle with after losing someone we love. So she does what she does best: she opens her notebook and starts investigating.

Thumbing through her late mother’s address book, Rosman begins to discover a woman whose life was intricately connected to a host of characters her daughter hardly knew. Her reporting skills at the ready, she embarks on a cross-country odyssey, tracking down total strangers from whom she hopes to learn about a woman she once thought she couldn’t know better. Venturing into the heart of some colorful communities, Rosman interviews friends and acquaintances of her mother’s, as well as people whose relationships with her were more complex though no less potent—among them a former golf caddie, a legendary Pilates instructor, an eBay glass collector, and an immigrant doctor at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. As Rosman attempts to fill in the blank spaces that may explain her mother’s motivations and philosophies in building a life and in facing death, she comes to understand this woman as she never imagined she could.

Blending humor, honesty, and old-fashioned reporting, Rosman grapples with the bittersweet reality that sometimes we can’t truly know someone until after she is gone. At once comforting, candid, and very funny, If You Knew Suzy is a heartfelt memoir against which readers can consider themselves and the lives of all those they love.

Publisher website:

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/If-You-Knew-Suzy-Katherine-Rosman/?isbn=9780061735233

Purchase your copy of  If You Knew Suzy by Katherine Rosman here.